Mobile units are used in many business application areas including applications related to data collection by field-based workers. Examples include business processes related to tracking and documenting product deliveries, tracking asset inventories, recording data related to quality inspections, recording data related to tasks performed during a manufacturing process, and recording data related to parts consumed and labor delivered while servicing customers. These work process automation and data collection activities span across many industries including manufacturing, healthcare, logistics, and service industry sectors. In many cases, the mobile unit exchanges data with one or more existing customer business systems or data repositories. In this regard, the mobile unit invention may maintain a real-time wireless connection to the network, or may periodically connect to the network for data exchange.
There are a number of challenges that are peculiar to or are exacerbated when automating business work flow processes with field based data collection on mobile units. For example, in many cases, mobile units are deployed in point-of-service applications where fast and efficient data entry and ready access to relevant data is important. Yet, mobile units and their resident applications often have limitations, e.g., in terms of screen size or performance for application presentation, that tend to constrain the quantity of user interface elements can be presented by the application at any one instant. Accordingly, there is a premium on efficient navigation through the work flow process and application and access to desired user interface elements for that step in the process.
In addition, it is desirable to provide rich functionality for mobile unit applications. For example, a service technician may make a number of service calls in connection with servicing a variety of issues for a number of different product types. In connection with each service call, the technician may use a mobile unit to access a service ticket that may include, for example, customer information, product and warranty information, and information describing the nature of the service call. During the service call, the technician may enter information relating to parts used, labor expended and other documentation concerning the service call. During or after the service call, this information may be used to update inventory, accounting or other enterprise data systems.
Some existing products addressing the automation of business work flow processes have used mobile units employing Internet based solutions. These solutions generally provide a browser at the user end, for instance on a mobile unit. Accordingly, a field user would access the browser on the mobile unit. This would send a hyper text transfer protocol (HTTP) request to a web server that would access a database or other business application, generate a response, and transmit that HTTP response to the mobile unit that would then display the information. Changes to the database or other business application would be handled similarly, with the mobile unit generating a HTTP request, transmitting this to a web server, the web server processing the request, and transmitting a return HTTP message back to the mobile unit.
Such web based solutions employing HTTP transfers and a browser are disadvantageous in that they require current connectivity to execute work flows. That is, if the browser on the mobile unit cannot connect to the proper server, for instance due to lack of cellular or WiFi coverage, the mobile unit cannot be used for desired work flow processing. Additionally, such a solution presents scalability issues in that the associated web server that must process the HTTP requests and responses has a finite load limit. Therefore, increased traffic on the web server, for instance due to a large number of employees conducting business, may slow or crash the web server causing inability to process business requests.